We generate a monthly data set containing historic nursing home census data. In addition, we generate a daily incremental data set that we append to our census history. The appending/refresh is presently done by hand within 64-bit Tableau Desktop. I have been able to use the Tableau SDK data extract APIs called from Visual Basic.NET to generate a daily incremental *.tde. [Had to compile Scott Steesy's C# wrapper for the DataExtract.dll which is bundled with the Python version of the Tableau SDK in order to call the DataExtract function from VB.] What we would like to do is this:

Programmatically generate the monthly historic data set from VB.NET and save it as a *.tde;

Union the daily incremental data set which would also be generated from VB.NET and saved as a *.tde with the historic data *.tde;

(1) and (2) will be automated processes driven by Windows Task Scheduler.

We would like to avoid incurring the additional expense of purchasing Alteryx Scheduler. I am not aware if there is functionality within the Tableau SDK data extract API to append *.tdes to one another. Is there a way, using the TABCMD command-line utility to do this? Is it inadvisable to do so for any reason?

After experimenting with publishing a data source to Tableau Server (we are running V. 9.2), it became apparent to me that the data source on the server points to a "live" file and not an extract. Our challenge now becomes creating an automated process to refresh the "live" file, which will in turn get used by Tableau to update the extract. (Or, at least, this is how I understand the process.) For all data that originates in MS SQL Server (or any other RDBMS), we will be able to eliminate Alteryx from the picture. Unfortunately, not all of our data resides in MS SQL Server, but, rather, in MS Excel. Until we eliminate MS Excel as a data source, we will need to use Alteryx or a similar tool for preprocessing.

I'm using SSIS to ALTER VIEW and calling tabonlinsyncclient.exe to incrementally refresh and append it to tableau online. I've been able to append hundreds of millions of rows this way.

But sometimes there are errors, so I'm looking for alternative methods of automating local TDE updates.

1) I've got a big tde on tableau online

2) I can manually create new tde's on my c: drive from my tds (connected to my sqlsvr view)

3) Then I can easily use tabcmd to append them to my big tableau onlne extract.

(Note: my source data is not a csv, and my tds contains lots of curation I've performed on it, so my tde updates must come from my tds structure.)

The question is for step 2: how do I use my tds to generate the local c: drive tde without manually doing so with the tableau desktop UI ? In other words, how do I automate the generation or full-refresh of a local tde file on my c: or unc path ?